Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-02-24-Speech-3-035"
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"en.20100224.13.3-035"2
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"Mr President, since the start of the economic and social crisis, over seven million people have joined the unemployment lines in Europe. By the end of this year, it is quite likely that over 25 million people will be unemployed. The good health of our economies and public finances, which we have striven so hard to put in order since the early 1990s, has been ruined in less than two years. Despite costly recovery measures, all we have managed to avoid so far is a complete collapse of the system.
It should combine the macro-economic policy agenda with structural policies in the economic, social and environmental fields to aim at the creation of at least five million net new jobs by 2015, particularly in the green economy. The European Council should state this intention clearly at the March summit as a key objective of the new strategy.
Proper economic policy coordination reaching well beyond the policing role of the stability pact should ensure that gradual fiscal consolidation in the different Member States is combined with the preservation of key public spending in growth areas and key social policies.
This will demand a political leap in thinking with regard to Europe’s – and, in particular, the eurozone’s – economic governance.
The March or June summit should give a mandate to its president, in close cooperation with the Commission, to submit an ambitious plan for the strengthening of economic governance in the EU for decision by the December 2010 Council.
We need to challenge the old way of doing things if we want to learn lessons from the current crisis and make it history as soon as possible. This is a chance to make Europe relevant to people and not just to markets. This can only become a reality if the 2020 strategy is indeed about people and about jobs – in other words, if it incorporates an ambitious social and decent-jobs agenda.
In the name of my group, I urge you to do all you can to put people, and not least, the most vulnerable people, at the heart of the European project.
Economic growth remains extremely weak, and many people have lost faith in the idea of an early recovery. Fears for the future trouble our societies, inequalities of all kinds have widened and some of our Member States are in desperate need of EU-wide solidarity and protection, having become the targets of ruthless and uncontrolled speculation. The crisis has gravely undermined Europe’s global competitiveness and weakened its political influence.
That is the gloomy landscape in which Europe now needs to reinvent its future in order to safeguard its model of economic and social development.
President Barroso, you are going to be asking the Spring Council where we want Europe to be in 2020. That is a very important question, but can we afford to argue about the distant future without first providing an answer to those millions of Europeans who are now feeling the impact of the crisis on their lives and who worry what will happen to their lives tomorrow – will they have a job; will they have the prospect of finding a new job? What answers can you give them?
I cannot go back to my region tomorrow and tell my people that they do not need to worry, that we have a plan for 2020. I need to answer their immediate worries and fears, and I want to be able to tell them that they will be able to keep their jobs, that new jobs will soon start to be created and that these jobs will be decent jobs with decent salaries.
At the moment, the only medium-term policy agenda is that set down by the European Council in December: the consolidation of public finances. By 2011, Member States are expected to start consolidation to bring their public deficits within the 3% limit within two years. At the same time, unemployment will still be rising; growth will be too weak to bring unemployment down.
There are other ways to pull Europe out of the crisis: putting people at the heart of our policy agenda and especially those who have been most hit by the crisis. I would urge President Van Rompuy and President Barroso to reconsider the nature of the so-called exit strategy. Europe should choose a morally decent way out of this crisis: a human way based on our fundamental values – which actually is also a smarter way in economic terms.
This will not be the case if macro-economic policy is totally focused on rapid consolidation. That would mean cuts in public investment, in education and training, in social and in health services. Consolidation cannot be achieved through tax rises alone. Europe’s growth potential would suffer even more than it already has and, as a result, the recovery would be extremely slow and a large share of the current unemployed would become long-term unemployed.
Europeans deserve a more balanced and socially responsible policy approach. We believe this approach should involve an ‘entry strategy’ into the labour market, which should form an integral part of the 2020 strategy and constitute its roadmap for the years up to 2015."@en1
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